The present invention relates to the field of secure Web request handling and, more particularly, to secure request handling using a kernel level cache.
A number of HTTP servers implement a cache accelerator that is a kernel based cache that is able to handle some requests at the System Licensed Internal Code (SLIC) level of a communication's stack, which refers to a stack of the various layers of abstraction present in a computing device. Use of a kernel based cache can improve efficiency, scale, and performance by quickly processing requests for kernel level cached content without traversing the entire kernel or entering an application space. By not involving an application layer, significant performance benefits can be realized.
Conventional implementations of kernel based caches are not able to handle requests arriving over a secure connection. A typical secure connection, such as a connection conforming to the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol, represents a secure end-to-end link over which Hypertext Text Transport Protocol (HTTP) or any other application protocol can operate. Each endpoint of the SSL protocol typically resides in the application layer of a communication's stack. It is at the application's layer that encryption/decryption of data occurs. Hence, data is encrypted as it passes through the SLIC level, which prevents requests from being parsed and selectively handled by a kernel based cache.